[WikiEN-l] Paper is not paper

Tue Oct 4 22:55:57 UTC 2005

On 04/10/05, Daniel P. B. Smith <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:

> But there is a practical limit of about thirty volumes for a print
> publication, isn't there? No, there isn't. The existence proof is any
> journal. Journals can and do grow linearly, year after year, into
> long rows of bound volumes which libraries, if not homes, manage to
> find room for on their shelves. I am sure that some homes have more
> than 30 bound-volumes-worth of the National Geographic neatly stacked
> up in attics or basements.

Newspapers (not that many places still keep bound copies) are an even
worse case.

Or bibliographies. The British Museum "Catalogue of Printed Books" to
1900 was 95 volumes; to 1905 was another 13-volume supplement. (Four
million books, if you're wondering). The Library of Congress /Catalog/
was 167 volumes for 1899-1942 (covering two million books; it was far
less because it reproduced the actual catalog cards) - and 1942-7 was
another forty. The Bibliotheque Nationale "Catalogue général" ran to
172 volumes as of 1948, and had only got up to 'Sim-' in the alphabet!

"Wikipedia is not paper" is a very good principle for some things -
for stylistic issues, for the wonderful ability to massively
crosslink, for categorisation and backlinks and the ability to scrawl
marginal notes everywhere - but I concur, it's not that meaningful a
guideline for inclusion issues.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk